For me, it looks like a Pannier tank, with Bachmann’s trademark high quality paint finish and printing. The face of the loco is perfectly captured, with a domed smokebox door and sturdy handle.

Detail

Couplings are easy to fit and temporarily remove, and there are very few other fixtures and fittings. The wires and moulded parts don’t feel so fragile as to fall off, but are still finely rendered.

Performance

I used the chassis on this loco to convert a Hornby J83 to a more modern specification, and really am impressed by the performance. The sprung centre-axle and skew-wound motor mean that it takes on insulfrog points without a problem, and the start and stop are extremely smooth – even with a bog-standard DC controller. Power is sufficient for a lightweight mixed traffic loco.

Maintenance

It’s very easy to get the body and wheels off for a bit of cleaning, and the whole thing is easy to put back together should you get a bit carried away. An 8-pin DCC socket makes it very easy to fit a decoder.

Comments

The mechanism really is good, and it doesn’t seem to suffer much for the lack of a flywheel. Well worth the £45 ish that they cost.